Signal transduction is any process by which a cell converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another. Processes referred to as signal transduction often involve a sequence of biochemical reactions inside the cell, which are carried out by enzymes and linked through second messengers. In many transduction processes, an increasing number of enzymes and other molecules become engaged in the events that proceed from the initial stimulus. In such cases the chain of steps is referred to as a “signaling cascade” or a “second messenger pathway” and often results in a small stimulus eliciting a large response. One class of molecules involved in signal transduction is the kinase family of enzymes. The largest group of kinases are protein kinases, which act on and modify the activity of specific proteins. These are used extensively to transmit signals and control complex processes in cells.
Protein kinases are a large class of enzymes which catalyze the transfer of the γ-phosphate from ATP to the hydroxyl group on the side chain of Ser/Thr or Tyr in proteins and peptides and are intimately involved in the control of various important cell functions, perhaps most notably: signal transduction, differentiation, and proliferation. There are estimated to be about 2,000 distinct protein kinases in the human body, and although each of these phosphorylate particular protein/peptide substrates, they all bind the same second substrate, ATP, in a highly conserved pocket. Protein phosphatases catalyze the transfer of phosphate in the opposite direction.
A tyrosine kinase is an enzyme that can transfer a phosphate group from ATP to a tyrosine residue in a protein. Phosphorylation of proteins by kinases is an important mechanism in signal transduction for regulation of enzyme activity. The tyrosine kinases are divided into two groups; those that are cytoplasmic proteins and the transmembrane receptor-linked kinases. In humans, there are 32 cytoplasmic protein tyrosine kinases and 58 receptor-linked protein-tyrosine kinases. The hormones and growth factors that act on cell surface tyrosine kinase-linked receptors are generally growth-promoting and function to stimulate cell division (e.g., insulin, insulin-like growth factor 1, epidermal growth factor).
Inhibitors of various known protein kinases or protein phosphatases have a variety of therapeutic applications. One promising potential therapeutic use for protein kinase or protein phosphatase inhibitors is as anti-cancer agents. About 50% of the known oncogene products are protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and their kinase activity has been shown to lead to cell transformation.
The PTKs can be classified into two categories, the membrane receptor PTKs (e.g. growth factor receptor PTKs) and the non-receptor PTKs (e.g. the Src family of proto-oncogene products). There are at least 9 members of the Src family of non-receptor PTK's with pp60c-src (hereafter referred to simply as “Src”) being the prototype PTK of the family wherein the approximately 300 amino acid catalytic domains are highly conserved. The hyperactivation of Src has been reported in a number of human cancers, including those of the colon, breast, lung, bladder, and skin, as well as in gastric cancer, hairy cell leukemia, and neuroblastoma. Overstimulated cell proliferation signals from transmembrane receptors (e.g. EGFR and p185HER2/Neu) to the cell interior also appear to pass through Src. Consequently, it has recently been proposed that Src is a universal target for cancer therapy, because hyperactivation (without mutation) is involved in tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis for many important human tumor types.
Because kinases are involved in the regulation of a wide variety of normal cellular signal transduction pathways (e.g., cell growth, differentiation, survival, adhesion, migration, etc.), kinases are thought to play a role in a variety of diseases and disorders. Thus, modulation of kinase signaling cascades may be an important way to treat or prevent such diseases and disorders.
An important contribution to the protein kinase field has been the x-ray structural work with the serine kinase cAMP-dependent protein kinase (“PKA”) bound to the 20-residue peptide derived from the heat stable inhibitor protein, PKI(5-24), and Mg2ATP (Taylor et al., 1993). This structural work is particularly valuable because PKA is considered to be a prototype for the entire family of protein kinases since they have evolved from a single ancestral protein kinase. Sequence alignments of PKA with other serine and tyrosine kinases have identified a conserved catalytic core of about 260 residues and 11 highly conserved residues within this core (Taylor et al., 1993). Two highly conserved residues of particular note for the work proposed herein are the general base Asp-166 which is proposed to interact with the substrate OH and the positively charged residue, Lys-168 for serine kinases and an Arg for tyrosine kinases (Knighton et al., 1993), which is proposed to interact with the γ-phosphate of ATP to help catalyze transfer of this phosphate. Two additional important PKA crystal structures have been reported (Madhusudan et al., 1994), one for the ternary PKA:ADP:PKI(5-24) complex wherein the PKI Ala 21 has been replaced with Ser (thereby becoming a substrate), and one for the binary PKA:PKI(5-24) complex wherein the PKI Ala 21 has been replaced with phosphoserine (an end product inhibitor). The ternary complex shows the serine OH donating a H-bond to Asp-166 and accepting a H-bond from the side chain of Lys 168. The binary complex shows the phosphate group of phosphoserine forming a salt bridge with the Lys-168 side chain and within H-bonding distance of the Asp-166 carboxyl group. These structures support the earlier proposed roles for Asp-166 and Lys-168 in the catalytic mechanism.
The x-ray structures of PKA show that the enzyme consists of two lobes wherein the smaller lobe binds ATP and the larger lobe the peptide substrate. Catalysis occurs at the cleft between the lobes. The crystallographic and solution structural studies with PKA have indicated that the enzyme undergoes major conformational changes from an “open” form to the “closed” catalytically active form as it binds the substrates (Cox et al., 1994). These conformational changes are presumed to involve the closing of the cleft between the two lobes as the substrates bind bringing the γ-phosphate of ATP and the Ser OH in closer proximity for direct transfer of the phosphate.
However, many inhibitors of protein kinases and protein phosphatases still lack the specificity and potency desired for therapeutic use. Due to the key roles played by protein kinases and protein phosphatases in a number of different diseases, including cancer, psoriasis, arthrosclerosis, Type II diabetes, obesity, and their role in regulating immune system activity, modulators of protein kinase cascades are needed.